Field of Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to the dispensing of liquid product into storage tanks and specifically to the identification of liquid product to be dispensed into storage tanks.
Related Art
Liquid products, such as gasoline, are initially dispensed into tanker transport trailers and transported to merchandisers, such as gas stations, to be emptied into storage tanks located at the merchandisers. The merchandisers may then sell the liquid products to consumers by transferring the liquid products from the storage tanks to the consumers. The tanker transport trailers include several different compartments so different types of liquid products are loaded onto a single transport trailer and then each type of liquid product is unloaded into the appropriate storage tank located at the merchandiser. For example, premium and unleaded gasoline is loaded into different compartments of the trailer and then distributed into the premium and unleaded storage tanks, respectively.
Conventional methods of dispensing the liquid products from the different compartments of the tanker transport trailers into the appropriate storage tanks include the operator manually distributing the liquid product contained in a compartment tank of the tanker transport trailer to a corresponding storage tank. In doing so, the operator manually connects an elbow to a storage tank inlet and then manually connects a hose from the elbow of the storage tank inlet to a coupler of an output of a compartment tank at the tanker transport trailer. The operator then manually initiates the dispensing of the liquid product located in the compartment tank through the hose and into the storage tank that is connected to the house. Typically, all of the outputs of a compartment tank are identical as well as the storage tank inlets with the only identification of the type of liquid product included in a compartment tank and/or to be dispensed into a storage tank is a label and/or a color identifier associated with the compartment tank and/or storage tank.
Thus, there is significant risk that the operator may mistakenly connect an elbow to the incorrect storage tank and/or connect the hose to the coupler of the incorrect compartment tank at the tanker transport trailer and dispense the incorrect liquid product into the incorrect storage tank. For example, the operator is to dispense premium gasoline from the tanker transport trailer to the storage tank. However, the operator mistakenly connects the elbow to the unleaded storage tank, connects the hose from to the compartment tank that has premium gasoline, and mistakenly dispenses premium gasoline into the storage tank that already contains unleaded gasoline. As a result, contamination of the unleaded gasoline in the storage tank occurs resulting in costly waste disposal and clean up as well as wasting the premium gasoline distributed into the storage tank.